A couple of times a year, the male aoudad on the ranch form up into bachelor groups by age. This is a shot of some the older mature males. There were another six to eight big boys off to the right but I just couldn't get them in the picture.

A few years ago on the last day of whitetail season, my son and I were up in one of our blinds. I wanted him to get a nice deer. About twenty five whitetail were having a convention under and around the feeder, when a beautiful twelve point buck with split G2's on both sides, like a mule deer, came out of the brush and trotted right into the herd.

My son really wanted this deer but with the amount of bodies under the feeder, he could never get a clear shot. This went on for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

I saw a few deer alert back to the left. By the way the deer alerted, I could tell it probably wasn't more whitetail. So, I told my son to find a shot on the big boy as something new was moving in from the left.

He decided on a neck shot and raised his rifle. Just as the opportunity presented itself and he was squeezing the trigger, all of the deer broke and scattered into the brush.

Out of the brush came a herd of aoudad with a big boy, pictured below, bringing up the caboose.

My son is very laid back and I can't remember the last time I ever saw him upset but he was mad.

Normally I would have gotten out of the stand and tried to wave off the aoudad quietly, hoping for the whitetail to come back in but the aoudad had gotten wise to that and would only move off for a couple minutes before moving back in.

Only one solution as I could tell. So, not having a rifle with me, I asked my son for his rifle and smoked this bad boy.

He ran about thirty feet and dropped. We bailed out of the stand and got my truck, loaded him up and were back in the stand in about ten minutes.

Only saw a couple of doe the rest of the morning and never saw that twelve again.

You can tell this ol' boy was a scrapper from all the scars on his face. He measured 35" on the right side and 34 1/2 on the left.

A couple of euros I did. These skulls were taken off skeletons I found while out working the ranch. The bigger one rests on the front of my son's garage over the garage door as his wife wouldn't let it in the house. LOL

The one on top measured right at 30 inches. The bottom one just over 34 inches.